


funny how the stars crossed right

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12846732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: Kara meets Lena at a party. And another. And another. And then just everywhere else. She falls a little bit more each time.





	funny how the stars crossed right

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Why by Sabrina Carpenter (surprisingly a bop).
> 
> To the peeps who've prompted me on tumblr, the answer is yes, and also y'all are real into TSwizzle.
> 
> Anyways, hope it's not shit, etc.

Kara loved parties. She loved having the chance to see her friends and having a moment to get away from her desk and textbooks for a few hours. She loved knowing everyone was too drunk to realise she had basically single-handedly eaten all of the random food the host had managed to find and put out at the last minute in an attempt to seem classy. She loved talking to new people and making friends with incredibly nice drunk girls in the bathroom queue.

So, naturally, she’d been pretty pumped all week about the costume party James’ frat was throwing. Except that she apparently missed some kind of memo because she definitely wasn’t fitting in amongst the rest of them. The rest of them being everyone else dressed in nothing but bed sheets as togas and loin cloths and nurses outfits that definitely weren’t appropriate for the workplace.

Everyone had gone sexy.

And Kara... Kara was a banana.

Honestly she didn’t regret it. The suit was comfortable as hell, and it was warm, and she got to wear her pyjamas underneath it to save time later if she happened to have one too many glasses of that fruity, but oddly toxic, punch Lucy always made (she didn’t even want to begin to think about what she put in there).

Essentially she was pretty proud of the outfit itself but not so much her apparent inability to realise that that party wasn’t the place to be a banana - unless it was somehow a sexy banana, but she didn’t really want to conjure up an image of what that would be...

... _And_ maybe she didn’t have to because a second later some boy in nothing but a yellow Speedo, with his entire body painted the same shade and a stem on his head, walked through. Truthfully he didn’t look half bad, especially not next to his friend who seemed to have just hung a bunch of grapes from his pants and was snacking on them as he wandered around.

“Yours is better,” a voice whispers right next to her ear and Kara yelps way too loudly in response. Loud enough that the owner of the voice manages to hear it over the music and produce a laugh. An incredibly nice laugh. Soft, and subtle, and pretty, and maybe Kara should actually turn around.

“What?” Is the only word she can manage to respond with when she makes eye contact with the girl because _holy hell in a hand basket_ she was pretty. Beautiful. Hot. A bunch of other adjectives that meant she was the nicest thing Kara had ever seen.

She was the kind of girl that Kara thinks could pull off a trash bag. But she’s not wearing a trash bag. She’s wearing a lab coat and killer heels and Kara is on the verge of a breakdown. A complete and utter bisexual breakdown. It’s not like this was the first girl she’d ever found attractive. She was well versed in crushing on attainable and unattainable girls alike. But this girl. This girl was celestial. She was breathtaking. She was watching Kara with a quirked brow and her bottom lip caught between her teeth like she was trying not to laugh at the, no doubt, slack-jawed look on Kara’s face.

“Your costume.” She points towards the yellow swallowing Kara’s figure and maybe she regrets the outfit a little bit now. She should have gone for a slutty cat, or literally anything else that got her legs out, or her arms. _She totally should have gotten her arms out._ _Why did she wear her long sleeved pyjamas? Why did she wear this banana suit? Why wasn’t she answering the incredibly pretty girl with the insanely green eyes and bewitching smile?_

“Oh, thank you.” Smooth.

“No problem. I love potassium.” The girl cringes and Kara lets the laughter slip easily from her lips at the sight of her grimace. “May I get you a refill, banana girl?”

“Yes you may... _Dr. Feelgood_.” Of course. Of course that’s what the nametag said. There was literally no other name that could have been on there at that moment and there was also literally no way Kara was sober enough to not let her mind wander into the gutter just a little bit... Or a lot.

She manages to stop herself from going too far down the rabbit hole. That being said, she travels far enough that she still feels like she might actually combust. Literally just explode into a pile of flames and ashes and liquid libido over a girl she didn’t even know the name of.

“Perfect. Wait here?”

“Can do,” Kara assures with a smile that’s quickly returned, allowing her cup to be gently pried from her iron grip. Only maybe she can’t wait because Winn looked about two seconds away from either puking or doing a strip tease for one of the guys on the football team (Kara doesn’t doubt for a second that it would be Clark and truthfully she’d rather gouge her eyes out than watch that).

She disappears before the girl comes back. Spends the rest of the evening plying Winn with water and being told she’s the best friend in the world. She doesn’t expect to spend the night thinking about a girl she barely knows, about a girl she assumed her attraction to would die down after a few hours apart and more than a few metres away from any kind of alcohol.

She really doesn’t expect to think about her constantly for the next few days.

(But she does.

She _so_ does).

* * *

 

Kara sort of, maybe, spends the week following the party looking out for long black hair and an almost too chiselled jaw line.

She fails.

Spectacularly.

In fact, the only thing she really succeeds in doing is alerting all of her friends to the fact that she’s on the lookout for a girl so that they in turn spend the week mocking her for it at any chance they get. A particular low point is the mop that Winn puts a black wig on. That whole experience was weird enough that she didn’t even dare question why he had the wig in the first place (Alex had insisted it was something sexual and the blush on his face had warned Kara to leave it alone).

So she hadn’t found her sexy doctor but had found out that Winn was doing some odd stuff behind closed doors. All in all, it was a pretty terrible week. A terrible week that ended with her being practically stuffed into suitable clothing and dragged to a party across campus.

Kara loses her friends at basically the exact moment they walk through the door. Not that she expected anything less, having already pre-planned her exact route towards the backyard on the way there in preparation for their desertion. She’s halfway through her escape when she hears a distinctly familiar voice shouting over the noise.

(And, no, she doesn’t almost trip over at the sound of it.

She totally does).

“Banana girl!” The girl is dressed in black jeans and a blue checked shirt this time and, though it’s far less revealing than her last outfit, she’s still nothing less than a tongue-tying masterpiece. In all honesty she was actually arguably more so of one with the pleased grin on her face and the soft flush of already having had one too many drinks.

“Dr. Feelgood,” she greets with a nervous smile and she’d probably have felt like an absolute idiot if it weren’t for the good natured laugh it produced from the girl in front of her.

“I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again,” the girl admits with a nervous smile and it strikes Kara that it never occurred to her in her week of over-thinking that this girl would have even questioned Kara’s disappearance, let alone dwell on it. Not that Kara wasn’t ecstatic that she did. She was definitely going to freak out about it when she was alone in her dorm room, safe from judgement.

“Oh, yeah, sorry about last time. My friend Winn could barely stand and I thought I’d better get him back to his dorm before he coerced me into doing our duet from our eighth grade talent show.” It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Apparently when Kara was drunk she was rather susceptible to Winn’s pout plus a show tune. Ultimately, the real surprise was that the two of them actually remembered it - dance moves and all - and that people genuinely complimented them on it when they were back to being bright eyed, sound of mind and incredibly embarrassed.

“Well maybe I can get you that drink now and you can tell me all about your time on the stage?”

“I’d love that.” It comes out far too enthusiastically, but then again, Kara is feeling pretty darn enthusiastic about getting to hang out with her again, especially considering she had no Winn to worry about since he had vowed to never drink another lick of alcohol again. She personally thinks he’ll make it a week before he breaks (Alex’s bet was four days) but she does figure she’s safe from total humiliation for tonight at least.

“Good. Come on, banana.”

“It’s Kara actually,” she informs her, even as she follows along dutifully like she was being lured by some insanely hot Pied Piper. She doesn’t know why she feels such an intense need to share that fact. Expect that she does. It’s because she needs to know the girls name. _Needs to_.

“Kara,” she tests and Kara almost goes into cardiac arrest. A name shouldn’t be hot. Her own name shouldn’t sound hot. It shouldn’t make her shiver. It does though. It _so_ does. And now her name was officially ruined for everyone else henceforth. “I’m Lena,” she adds, holding out her hand patiently but Kara doesn’t hesitate to grab hold.

She doesn’t let go when she should. In her defence, neither does Lena. At a certain point their hands stop moving in the practised jig, simply remaining connected between their bodies, limp but unrelenting. They don’t escape their haze until some drunk frat boy bumps into them, spilling his drink and a thousand apologies at once until he scampers off towards his friends like it never happened - which was probably true for his blacked out memory.

“Drink?” Kara prompts, pointing towards their intended destination.

She allows Lena to lead the way and she tells herself she won’t take advantage of the tight black jeans she’s wearing. Unfortunately telling herself she won’t isn’t quite enough to dissuade her from enjoying the view when the time comes. But, come on, they were practically painted on. And Lena’s curves were a work of art worthy of a place in the Louvre. Honestly, watching is more of a reflex than a choice (the low groan she releases was definitely not on purpose).

She gets caught just as they reach the drinks table and, as Lena chuckles, all she can really do is allow her face to heat up dramatically and shrug apologetically - even if she can’t really find it within herself to be all that sorry.

“Lane’s juice?” Lena looks shocked as Kara picks up a cup and reaches for the ladle with practised ease. “Well aren’t you full of surprises.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kara questions, filling her cup and Lena’s in turn with a look that dares Lena to come out and speak her mind.

“You’re just all cute and sweet in your flowery shirt. It’s hard to imagine you purposely tempting fate with the devils drink.” Kara scoffs. She wasn’t that cute or sweet, and she happened to really love this particular flowery shirt. She looked good in this flowery shirt.

Still, Kara accepts Lena’s words as the challenge they are and downs her entire cup, wordlessly daring Lena to do the same, which, props to her, she does in an instant without any sign of hesitation. The both of them look a little too proud when they finish considering it wasn’t going to end in anything good. Drinks made by Lucy never ended in anything good - except maybe that one time Kara found a stray cat (she really did miss Streaky).

She’s not quite sure how it escalates but boy does it ever. It escalates again, and again, and again until they find themselves involved in an elaborate series of drinking challenges to prove a point that Kara can’t remember, or maybe never even new in the first place.

Kara’s memory goes blank after the fourth ‘task’ and she wakes up the next morning in a haze, with a half smudged number painted on her arm in crimson lipstick and her screensaver set to a picture of her and Lena, faces pressed together, laughing on the grass outside the frat - which at least explained the mud on her body and the kink in her neck.

She doesn’t have too much time to gather her sporadic remembrances into one clear view of the night as she takes a look at her clock and realises she’s already five minutes late to her early lecture. She runs all the way there in last night’s clothes, regretting all her life’s decisions. Or maybe none of them at all because a pretty girl told her, her name and that was almost enough to beat out the waves of nausea crashing into her.

(Almost.

She still vomits in a bush).

* * *

 

“Kara, hey! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Lena appears out of nowhere almost the exact moment Kara steps through the door in a planned attack that makes Kara think she’d just been waiting for her to arrive. The thought makes her heart flutter and her stomach whirl in simultaneously the best and worst way. It makes her palms threaten to sweat. No. It makes them fully start to sweat. She bashes up her glasses self consciously as she examines the girl in front of her - painted lips spread into an honest smile and eyes a little unsure about how much she might have just shared with that one measly confession.

“You have?”

“Yeah - I need a beer pong partner and I just saw your little friend fawning over Kent, figured you wouldn’t be far behind.” Kara follows Lena’s finger and automatically rolls her eyes at the sight of Winn hanging from Clark’s every word.

Thankfully he wasn’t the only one doing that exact thing. Lois Lane was also doing an incredible impression of a bobble head dog as she listened along but at least she had the decency to cut in and call Clark on his bullshit every once in a while. Kara supposed that’s why Clark had that huge, mountain sized crush on her.

Well, that, and her killer jaw line.

_Speaking of killer jaw lines._

“Of course Winn immediately found Clark.” Kara sighs, turning her attention back to Lena. Winn really needed to get that odd crush, which he refused to ever actually call a crush, under control - preferably before Alex ran out of patience and outright laughed in his face about the sheer obviousness of it (which was getting closer and closer with each passing day).

“Clark, huh? You guys friendly?” She sounds jealous. Lena sounds jealous. Her words are tense, her crossed arms even tenser and it’s a little bit satisfying. It’s more than a little bit satisfying. Kara couldn’t say that she was usually a fan of the jealous type, not to the degree of possessiveness anyhow, but the simmering fire lingering in the depths of Lena’s eyes made her want to push this a tiny bit. Unfortunately her brain takes the time to remind her that her and Clark share blood and she’s immediately more creeped out than anything.

“He’s my cousin.”

“Oh,” Lena answers dumfounded, obviously searching for the resemblance that she’s unlikely to find beyond shining blue eyes and a similar need to make the world a better place. “Is the obscene muscle definition genetic then?” _And that_.

Kara almost physically applauds herself on her perfect choice of attire - the vintage band tank top that she had stolen from Alex a few years back and usually reserved for the gym. No one had batted an eyelash when she came from her dorm in the shirt and Kara was thankful that it hadn’t yet dawned on them the exact reason she was wearing it was so that Lena would take note.

She wasn’t _just_ cute.

“I like to think effort had a little something to do with it,” Kara jokes, not really expecting much of a response, expecting the conversation to quickly switch to something else, but Lena seems too engrossed in staring at her arms to follow through on that and Kara’s definitely too busy blushing to think of anything smart to say.

“Must’ve been a lot of effort.”

“You can touch if you like, it’s not a museum.” _Oh God_. She actually said that out loud. Like _out loud_ , out loud. To Lena’s face. And, yes it was pithy and flirty and clever, but she actually just said it out loud to Lena’s face and she really needed the ground to swallow her up...

Except maybe she didn’t because Lena looked like she was honestly debating the offer and _holy shit_ she actually looked like she was about to take Kara up on it and reach forward.

“Luthor! Danvers! Are you just gonna stare at each other all night or actually play?” Mike shouts from across the room and truthfully Kara could go either way. Neither option sounded particularly unappealing to her, especially if it ended in a victory lap whilst Mike whined in the corner.

“Calm down, Matthews, we’re coming,” Lena shouts back just as loud, flipping Mike off the second she hears the telltale signs of his mumbled complaints and groaned _‘we don’t have all nights’_. “Come on, let’s destroy him,” she adds, pulling Kara towards the already prepared table.

Ultimately it’s an easy win. An easy win that comes off the back of Kara’s, frankly awesome, winning shot. An easy win that results in a full bodied hug that Kara wasn’t at all prepared for. She almost turns to putty in Lena’s sure grip at first. Then the alcohol kicks in and Kara lifts Lena from her feet in a tight bear hug that has the girl in her arms uncontrollably laughing.

They do take their victory lap. Lena securely on Kara’s shoulders waving like she was the Princess of Genovia, and Mike predictably moping in the corner because Kara had beaten him again at a game he claimed to be the reigning champion of.

(But hey...

It wasn’t her fault she was amazing at beer pong).

* * *

 

It’s not her fault. That’s the main point that should be remembered. Her main thought on the other hand is a little less succinct but something along the lines of ‘oh boy’ and ‘crap’. But it’s still not her fault. The flooding in the laundry room that is.

One minute everything was fine. Her clothes were washing. She was actually doing the weeks reading. She hadn’t fallen asleep in a public place yet again (she really needed to stop doing that). Then it went all terribly wrong. It was just a sprinkle at first. A constant drip of water that made a puddle just big enough to be noticeable. Then it was a deluge.

Now, Kara wasn’t being dramatic when she said a small child could have drowned in there. She herself was wading in water, scrambling around the machine and hoping she could somehow turn the water off, or just plug the leak and wait until someone else discovered it and presumed they broke it themselves. She couldn’t. Probably because she was consumed with some insane panic.

She really needed the room to stay clear. She couldn’t explain another complete disaster with her in attendance (causing a minor microwave explosion was enough drama for one week - although evidently the universe had decided it wasn’t if her soaked socks were any indication).

She’d gone through all the paper towels and all her patience by the time the universe screws her over once again and the door opens. She pokes her head over the machine from her place on the floor at the sound of water gushing out the door. It doesn’t click with her who she’s seeing until she hears a shocked yelp and a pained splash.

“Fuck!”

“Lena?” Kara scrambles to her feet quickly, slipping and sliding until she’s somehow miraculously made her way to Lena’s side and is attempting to pull her up tentatively. Although, arguably it’s not tentatively enough because the moment she tugs, apparently so does Lena, and then they’re both dropping straight back into the water.

“Taking initiative I see, banana girl.” Lena smirks, quirks her brow with a pointed look towards her chest and Kara is terribly confused until she follows her line of sight and _oh_ her hand was on Lena’s boob. She was groping her boob. _Oh God_. She really needed to take her hand off her boob. Her incredibly nice boob.

“I’m so sorry.” Kara jumps up, successfully managing to pull Lena up with her and keep them safely planted on their feet this time. Their increasingly wetter feet. Because Kara still hadn’t fixed that little (insanely huge) problem.

“I’m not,” Lena throws back quickly with a wink before inquiring, “what exactly happened here?”

“It just kind of exploded and then there was so much water and it wouldn’t stop and it still hasn’t stopped.” It really wasn’t her fault. She would personally like to blame shoddy workmanship, and the fact that the machines were older than she was, but she didn’t think that would go down so well with the people who actually had to pay to fix all this (especially considering her track record).

“Ok... What if I...” Lena tinkers about round the back of the machine for a second and then everything goes silent. No whirring. No water. No internal freak outs in her head about how to explain another accident to Alex and Eliza.

“You’re amazing!”

“Oh, nah, it was nothing really,” Lena says subconsciously and it only makes the somewhat small crush that Kara currently had for her grow because she apparently couldn’t manage to be uncool, even when her back was completely drenched with bubbly water and her hair was in beautiful disarray. She really was too good for this world.

“That wasn’t nothing. You’re seriously my hero. And to repay you, I’m willing to share my hot chocolate.” She hoped Lena realised how big a deal that was. It was a huge deal. One that Lena definitely deserved considering she was currently pulling Kara’s clothes from the machine dutifully, checking the room was still clear every two to three seconds like she was trying to scrub any evidence of their (mainly Kara’s) involvement in the disaster.

“Your hot chocolate? I am _honoured_ ,” Lena replies mockingly, feigning complete gratitude, and whilst it’s completely adorable, Kara can’t just let the slight go. She perhaps doesn’t think through her action as much as she should, doesn’t access the consequences enough, estimate the damages to the correct degree.

That is to say, that she pushes Lena in retaliation but maybe, sort of, didn’t factor in the slippery wet floor and thus has to immediately grab for Lena the second the push lands and Lena yelps in fear of falling over. And maybe everything could have been normal then but instead Kara underestimates the strength of her tug yet again and pulls Lena’s body flush against her own.

Hips to hips. Chest to chest. Lips so close to lips.

So, _so_ close. So close that she could smell the mint on Lena’s breath, and the slight hint of tequila that hadn’t quite faded regardless of the effort put in to make it disappear. So close that her debate on whether her eyes were green or blue only heated up because she could clearly see specks of both. So close that she was getting a little dizzy skipping from her eyes to her lips and back to her eyes (and then back to her wonderful lips).

Kara kinda really wants to kiss Lena, but she’s not sure that Lena kinda really wants to kiss her back, so instead she smiles apologetically and distances herself a step. And then another. Maybe one more. Her willpower seemed stronger with a little distance - which was totally reasonable when considering what she was up against.

“Let’s go get out of these wet clothes.”

“Someone’s feeling frisky today.”

“ _Oh God, no!_ Not that you’re not- and that I wouldn’t want- I mean it’d be- I just meant I have warm sweatshirts, and blankets, and the complete X-Files boxset if you’re interested?” _Great save, Kara, you idiot_.

“In Gillian Anderson? Always. Lead the way.” They spend the rest of the day, shoulder to shoulder, on Kara’s bed watching television, their hands almost but never quite touching. It makes Kara’s stomach tie itself in knots but she’d still argue it was one of the best days of her life. And if they happen to claim they know nothing of what happened in the laundry room the next day, that’s their prerogative. One that works out perfectly when Mike gets the blame.

(To reiterate...

Best. Day. Ever).

* * *

 

She’s not checking her phone every few minutes. She’s not. She’s really not. Alex definitely did not leave her alone an hour ago with an eye roll and a mumbled ‘just text her already’. She didn’t. She really didn’t. Kara wasn’t having an internal debate about whether or not to take her up on that advice. She wasn’t. She really wasn-

Okay.

So... maybe all of those things were true. She was obsessively checking her phone, and Alex did get annoyed, and she was currently staring at Lena’s contact in her phone and daring her thumb to press the message button. At the rate her courage was currently growing she might actually push it by the time she turns eighty-four. Maybe ninety. Definitely ninety-six.

By the time she’s at the point of checking her phone four times every minute, and is pretty sure even the librarian was getting annoyed at her obvious self-doubt, she decides enough is enough and slots it into her bag, pulling her textbook towards her instead and vowing to not look again until she was finished actually studying. She doesn’t have faith but she throws herself into it anyway and she gets to the point where she honestly thinks she might actually manage to finish early when the squeak of someone settling into the chair opposite her catches her attention.

“Kara Danvers reading and not causing trouble? Who would’ve thought it possible.” Kara tries to send a glare across the table, she’s not quite so sure it manages to land with any heat though considering Lena mostly just looks like she wants to laugh.

“Hey! It’s never intentional.” That much was true. She actually actively avoided trouble. It just seemed like trouble wasn’t on the same page and had instead decided to follow her around everywhere. Not that she caused all that much. Just a few minor appliance failures and that one fire from her attempt at cooking - which was so much harder than baking - but in her defence on that one, Alex had also started a fire the time she tried to make lasagne so it was clearly a family thing.

“You mean you didn’t orchestrate an entire flood to coerce me into your room?” Kara tenses despite the fact that she knows she didn’t and immediately goes on the defensive.

“What? No!” Maybe a little _too_ defensive.

“Relax, Kara. I’m kidding.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I would’ve been flattered though. _The_ _Kara Danvers_ plotting to get little old me in her room.” Lena puts an odd amount of emphasis on her name and whilst there were a few mysteries about Lena that Kara realised she’d probably never get the answer to, this one she really wanted to know, especially considering she never actually told Lena her last name.

“What’s with the _Kara Danvers_ thing?”

“There’s a huge poster of you outside the library,” Lena admits. Kara just groans and drops her head into her hands. She’d asked them not to do that. She, in fact, explicitly said _please do not do that_ and what did they do? That. She blamed Clark for enjoying the attention. “I didn’t realise you were such a huge deal on campus, Mrs Star-Track-Athlete.”

“It’s just running.” Really fast. And maybe winning some trophies and setting some records along the way - enough that the university had decided to capitalise on her success and put up a poster. Which, once again, she partially blamed on Clark who rather enjoyed having his own posters up round campus (even if he claims he’s embarrassed).

“Coming from someone who loathes exercise, running is never _just running_.”

“It’s calming,” Kara insists.

“It’s really not,” Lena quickly rebuts with a scoff with a look of pure disgust on her face that Kara can’t stop herself from laughing at, a look of complete and utter repulsion that has Kara struggling to resist teasing Lena just a little bit more.

“You could run with me sometime.”

“So what do campus big shots study?” Lena responds immediately and Kara can’t help the wide grin that spreads across her face at the deflection. A grin that slips from Kara’s face just as quickly as it appeared when Lena tugs her book towards her and suddenly all she feels is nervous. “Advanced theoretical physics?” She sounds incredulous, looks even more so. Her face shifts from confused, to shocked, to just completely blank. Kara’s on the other hand stays steadfastly bashful and nervous.

“Yeah, it’s-“

“Hot.” Not what she was going to say. Definitely not what she was expecting Lena to say. She’d been told it was surprising. Nerdy, she had definitely heard. A couple of scoffs and quips about her cheating her way through she had come to expect since apparently it had been decided that the body of a runner and the mind of a physicist had to be mutually exclusive, which she personally found ridiculous. But never hot. She’d never been called hot.

“Hot?”

“Ineffably,” Lena reassures, pulling out her own book on biomedical engineering and suddenly Kara feels calm, sure, and slightly proud. They spend the rest of the day studying together in relative silence, occasionally throwing ideas at each other from their respective fields and going on rants about some theory or another. Lena disappears for a while and returns with snacks like she could tell Kara was fighting to keep her stomach from rumbling.

It’s peaceful, and nice, and Kara gets a warm feeling every time she looks up and finds Lena already looking her way, pen stuck behind her ear and a charming smile spread across her face. It’s a little less peaceful when Lena moves said pen into her mouth to nibble on and a wildfire starts raging through Kara’s body but she wasn’t complaining. She was the very opposite of complaining. And when she checks her phone that evening when she gets back to her room and finds a text from Lena displaying a single heart she feels giddy.

(It was a good day.

A _really good_ day).

* * *

 

Numb.

She feels numb.

She’s been hiding in her room, piled under every blanket she could find, for hours. She can barely remember anything beyond the complete darkness she’d created and the heat she can’t quite feel. Her heartbeat is quiet. Her breathing silent. She hasn’t spoken all day, hasn’t sent any texts, hasn’t even dared look at her phone. She knows what’ll be there, knows that all of her friends will have sent the same thing they always do, the same thing she deletes before opening. She knows there’ll be a voicemail from Eliza that will make her feel better tomorrow but only worse today.

She knows.

Alex sat with her for a while. The tapping of the keys on her laptop whilst she did her work was soothing for a little while. Then it just seemed so loud, so ceaseless, so irritating. Everything seemed so loud. She’d held Kara for a while, saying nothing as she drew gentle patterns on her back in an attempt to calm Kara down. But Kara wasn’t riled up. Or panicked. She didn’t feel anxious. She just felt... numb. The same way she always did on this day. The day she lost them.

So she lays down, staring up at nothing, and wondering when the tears stopped coming, when they became nothing more than dried tracks on her cheeks and a slight hint of salt on her tongue. She lies down and attempts not to think about what she lost but only succeeds in thinking about it all. Again, and again, and again in the world’s worst repetitive cycle.

She doesn’t expect to see anyone else. Her friends wouldn’t dare enter her room. Alex would appear tomorrow morning with waffles and pretend like this wasn’t the hardest day of the year for both of them, like she hadn’t also spent all of today alone and scared because this was the one thing in Kara’s life she couldn’t protect her from, couldn’t make better, couldn’t fix. She doesn’t expect Lena.

“So, since I found out you’re a huge nerd, I need you to read this immediately so we can discu-“ Kara doesn’t flinch at the abrupt sounds, nor the abrupt end to them. She doesn’t move from her cocoon. The very cocoon she supposed was the reason for the abrupt stop. “Kara?” Lena says next, far more tentatively than before.

Kara listens to her cautious steps, the muffled tap of Lena’s shoes against the carpeted floor as she slowly makes her way closer like she’s not sure what to do, not sure what Kara wants her to do. The blankets are pulled from her face one by one, until Kara finds herself wincing at the sudden change in light where she hadn’t pulled her curtains perfectly closed.

Lena’s expression is soft but mostly unsure. Unsure if she’s overstepped some unspoken boundaries. Unsure as to what has drained the light from Kara’s eyes. Unsure why Kara’s cooped up in a dark room, under a thousand blankets when the sun was shining brightly outside. Unsure how to fix a problem when she doesn’t even know what it is.

It’s the unsure expression that has Kara pulling her hand from its woollen confines and handing over a creased photograph. She doesn’t say anything. She knows she doesn’t have to when Lena gently takes the photo and Kara watches her put two and two together as she surveys the frayed edges and a little Kara Danvers, missing a tooth, and sandwiched between the faded shadows of her parents.

“ _Oh_ ,” she whispers and then she’s quiet for a moment before she stands up, and for a split second, despite her self-imposed isolation, Kara’s actually scared she might leave. But she doesn’t go. She simply wanders into the bathroom momentarily before returning with a washcloth that she presses across Kara’s forehead, and her cheeks, along the bridge of her nose and her jaw.

She watches Kara the entire time. Her gaze steadily meeting Kara’s weaker one, even when it’s to the detriment of her less precise hand. She just watches, examines, ponders. There’s no pity in her eyes, no rush to tell Kara how sorry she is for everything she lost like she somehow played a part in it. There is compassion, and tenderness, and the underlying look of real understanding that Kara hadn’t found in a really long time.

“April sixth,” Lena says cryptically just as the silence settles into something comfortable. It’s enigmatic enough that Kara’s curiosity gets the better of her.

“What?” It’s croaky, and hoarse, and the first word Kara has attempted saying all day - she has a feeling Lena knows that little fact if the small uptick of her mouth is any indication. It would seem that Lena knew exactly what she was doing when she spoke.

“The day my mother died. The day that I climb under my bed and hide, and silently ask myself over and over again why I was left alone. What I’m trying to say is that I know how this feels - the grief, the pain, the numbness. I know it. And it’s okay to feel it all; it’s okay to feel broken. I know I do.”

“Why me?” Kara asks forlornly after a moment as tears she was almost sure she’d ran out of gently starting trickling down her cheeks once again. “Why do I get to live?” It’s the question she asks herself every year. The question she hadn’t verbalised since the first year she’d gone without her mother’s warmth and her father’s terrible jokes.

“I don’t know,” Lena admits simply before adding, “but I’m thankful I got the chance to know you.” They remain quiet after that as Kara leans more fully into Lena’s hand that’s resting on her cheek. Lena touch is tender as she brushes Kara’s hair from out of her eyes and presses a kiss to her forehead after a moment of obvious deliberation. “I should go.” Lena gets up, brushing her legs in nothing more than a stalling tactic before she makes to leave.

Kara catches her hand before she takes single step.

Takes a deep breath.

“Could you, maybe, stay a little longer?”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” The tension drains from Kara’s shoulders at the words and the easy way Lena slips under the blankets through the gap Kara offers. Kara spends the rest of the day with her head on Lena’s shoulder, gradually sharing stories about her parents and their old house, the grilled cheese her dad always made that was never less than perfect, and how they inspired her to follow her scientific curiosity, how their deaths inspired her to run, how it made the world stop spinning if only for a little while.

(Kara falls asleep with Lena by her side.

When she wakes up, she feels a little less numb).

* * *

 

“What are you doing here?” Kara asks the next day when she finds Lena standing on the track, somewhat conveniently appearing after Kara had already done enough laps to feel the burn in her chest and legs. She never thought she’d find Lena here. She’s pretty sure Lena herself said she wouldn’t be caught dead on the running track (or maybe it was that if she ever were to actually go running it just might kill her).

“Running,” Lena states blankly.

“You hate running.” It’s a pointless thing to say. They both know it’s the truth. She was incredibly vocal about it. Lena had actually stated on multiple occasions that she thought running was a ludicrous way to spend time.

“Yes I do. So are we doing this or what?” Kara smiles, starts running.

“Come on, slowpoke,” she calls over her shoulder, chuckling at the way Lena is already lagging behind and groaning about terrible decisions and stupid pretty girls.

(Neither mention why Lena is really there.

They both know why she is).

* * *

 

She doesn’t know why she let Lucy talk her into this. She does know how. She was weak-willed, and susceptible to bribes, and Lucy had come to know too many of her weaknesses over the years (which really just meant that she knew to ask Kara when she was watching Wonder Woman and eating ice cream. Extra points if it was mint choc chip. _Extra, extra_ points if she also had whipped cream, chocolate sauce and a handful of extra chocolate chips).

So Lucy used every trick in her arsenal and Kara said yes to something that she never should have said yes to in a million years. A car wash fundraiser. A _bikini_ car wash fundraiser, which meant that Kara was currently in shorts and a sports bra being ogled by a bunch of people whose name’s she didn’t know, and some whose name’s she did know, but never wanted to know that they knew what she looked like without at least three layers of clothing on her torso (namely Maxwell and Mike).

On the brightside, she could apparently add ‘extremely gifted at washing cars’ to her resume. It was actually rather therapeutic in way and she was rather enjoying throwing water at Lucy at any chance she got in some semblance of retaliation. Or at least, she was, until Lucy decided that her water throwing meant asking her about her personal life was fair game.

“Is your girlfriend coming?”

“Lena’s not my girlfriend,” Kara retorts without thought.

“But you knew exactly who I was talking about.” Lucy looks unimaginably smug and maybe Kara did walk straight into that one, but in her defence Lucy had been calling Lena that all week and then she got Alex involved because apparently those two ganging up was a thing now. An incredibly annoying thing considering Winn and James were always more than happy to jump on the teasing bandwagon. Even John had started joining in. _John_.

“Shut u-“ She starts before a familiar voice interrupts.

“Kara!”

“Speak of the devil,” Lucy mumbles with a grin, smiling harder when Kara shoves her towards an awaiting car, stumbling off with amused laughter. Kara glares at her the whole time until turning her attention to Lena and immediately plastering a smile on her face.

“Lena, hey, what are you doing here?”

“I came to donate.” Kara eyes her confusedly for a moment, eyeing the empty space over her shoulder where there was a distinct absence of a car to be cleaned. Lena must pick up on the confusion because she gestures for Kara to wait a moment as she rummages through the satchel hanging from her shoulder. Kara can’t help but roll her eyes at the item she produces.

“That’s a USB,” Kara deadpans.

“It’s shaped like a car.” It wasn’t a lie she supposed. It was shaped like a red VW bug. The problem was the fact that, whilst it looked like a car, it certainly wasn’t alright to be washed like one. Though Kara was in half a mind to dunk it in a bucket of soapy water just to see how Lena would react. It would undoubtedly wipe that smug, victorious look off her face.

“You’re an idiot.”

“A rich idiot.” Lena pairs the words with a thoughtless swish of her hand over their donation jar, dropping in way more money than anyone before her, way more money than any college student should have any business giving away without hesitation, way more than they deserved for not having even polished her stupid little USB drive.

Now, Kara obviously knew Lena was rich (except not so obviously because she didn’t find out until Alex had dropped the word billionaire casually into her teasing). But, rich or not, single-handedly funding the track team seemed a little over the top in terms of support, especially if you aren’t exactly the biggest fan of the sport you’re donating towards.

“Lena, that’s too much, you can’t-“

“My family have more money than they know what to do with and I can tell this means a lot to you,” Lena says with a soft smile that abruptly morphs into a smirk. “Even if running still sucks.”

“Thank you!” Kara throws herself maybe a little too harshly at Lena but she catches Kara nonetheless, wrapping her arms hesitantly around Kara for a second before her grips shifts into something more sure. The gentle touch of Lena’s hands on the bare small of her back sends an obvious shiver down her spine. She doesn’t dwell on it too much, blames it on the coolness of Lena’s skin and hopes she doesn’t notice that Kara is practically melting into her body.

Kara hesitantly pulls away from her hug assault, slowly removing her arms from around Lena’s neck and taking a step backwards. She finds Lena’s cheeks flushed and her eyes skittish as they refuse to look up and catch Kara’s gaze. Her first reaction is to freeze, afraid that she’s messed this up somehow, afraid that she’s made this whole thing abnormally awkward. She realises how completely wrong her assumptions are when her stomach tenses in anticipation of Lena making her escape and finds Lena’s only real reaction to be a low groan.

 _Interesting_. Kara tests her hypothesis by tensing abs again, visibly watching the colour of Lena’s eyes darken at the act. _Incredibly interesting_. She’s seconds away from calling Lena out on her leering before she’s rudely interrupted by Lucy. _Damn Lucy_.

“Kara, we need you!”

“I have cars to wash but we should hang out later. I read that book you left behind and I have some very strong opinions on it.” Namely that whoever wrote it was a crackpot who barely understood basic science. She had a feeling Lena might not be on the same page as her in that respect. She had a stronger feeling that their difference in opinion was going to make for a fun evening.

“Text me when you’re done?” Lena offers and Kara nods quickly.

“Can’t wait,” she throws over her shoulder as she gets back to work, once again immediately wondering why she let Lucy talk her into this. She should never have let Lucy talk her into this. She turns back after a moment to find Lena standing in the same place she left her, dopey look on her face and her lip caught between her teeth.

(Maybe getting talked into it wasn’t the worst thing ever.

Not that she’d admit that to Lucy).

* * *

 

It all happened at once. One moment Kara was minding her own business, pretending she was doing the work she’d left until the last minute whilst really just falling into some Facebook mutual black hole (she had absolutely no idea how Barry had become friends with Oliver Queen). One moment she was sitting peacefully in her dorm and blasting out all the songs her roommate said she hated just to get them out of her system for the night. One moment everything was pretty nice.

And then it wasn’t.

The next moment the door was slamming open and her roommate was stumbling in with some stranger or another attached to her mouth and other parts of her body that Kara really didn’t want to think all that much about. The next moment she was hearing moans that she never in a million years wanted to hear and watching the scene unfold with wide eyes and a grimace.

The thing was, her roommate seemed so engrossed with what she was doing - namely being pushed onto the bed and straddled – that she hadn’t even stopped to notice Kara’s presence in the room. Or, she had, and had promptly decided that she didn’t care if she put on a show. Whatever, the answer, Kara had already seen far more than she’d ever wanted to, so she quickly grabbed her phone and bolted (whilst wearing fluffy duck slippers no less).

So she’d left, after being eternally scared and had taken to hiding in the common room for an hour, staring at the wall and  doing her very best to wipe her brain clean of any residual images, whilst eating anything she could get her hands on. She figured after that much time, and that much stolen pudding, she would be in the clear.

She was wrong.

 _So. Very. Wrong_.

If anything it had gotten worse, and not even like a little bit worse, it had escalated to something that sounded more akin to a fight than anything else. God, she really hoped her roommate hadn’t broken her desk again. Blushing through the explanation as she requested a new one was bad enough the first time. She didn’t think she could handle a second. No. She _knew_ she couldn’t. She was actually fully willing to go the rest of the year without a desk if it came down to it.

But if she wasn’t willing to go through that explanation again, she was even less willing to sit around knowing what was happening in her room, only to have to politely knock later and hope it was clear. She needed somewhere to go. Her feet are taking her in a direction before she’s consciously decided where she’s going and by the time it clicks where she’s wandering to, she wonders why it was her first choice, wonders because she’s not going to Winn, or Alex, or Lucy.

She’s going to Lena.

Lena whose room she’d never actually been inside before. Lena whose room she’d only seen from over the girls shoulder when Kara walked her back to her dorm after a particularly late library session. Lena who she totally had a crush on and was about to see in her pyjamas - which maybe shouldn’t have been as nerve-wracking of a prospect as it was. Lena whose door she was currently knocking on and awaiting an answer with baited breath.

“I got locked out. No. That’s a lie. My roommate is having really loud sex and I’m all for exploring your sexual needs and all that but I have to be in at nine in the morning and I need to sleep.” Lena looks taken aback for a second, and maybe she should have said hello before throwing all of that at her, considering she definitely looked like Kara had pulled her from sleep (which wasn’t to say she didn’t still look amazing. She definitely looked amazing).

“All for exploring sexual needs huh?” Lena jokes, stepping aside without delay to let Kara inside regardless of the teasing, or Kara’s word assault. Kara slips inside with a thankful but bashful smile because of course that’s what Lena would focus on in all of that.

“Lena!” It’s a half-hearted chastisement because Kara is far too tired, and way too thankful to be in such close proximity to a bed, to put any real frost into her tone. Plus the room was warm and Lena smelled like vanilla and sweet dreams so Kara was naturally about two blinks away from collapsing onto the floor and going to sleep.

“Fine. I’ll save that question for another night.” Kara didn’t doubt for a second that Lena would bring it up again at some time or another. She seemed to get far too much joy out of making Kara blush (case in point - the bright, knowing smile on her face at the realisation that Kara had definitely noticed how short her pyjama shorts were and was enjoying the view immensely).

Kara stops for a moment to take in her surroundings as Lena closes the door behind her. It’s strange how different it looks from her own considering the only real difference was that it was a single and not a double.

Except that wasn’t quite the only difference.

Kara’s walls were covered in posters, and pictures, and paintings she had attempted when she felt creativity flowing through her fingers. Her desk flooded with knickknacks, and post-its, and crumbled up balls of paper from moments of complete annoyance and despair. Her bed in a state of total disarray at all times. Lena walls, however, were all but bare. Her desk the poster child for order and conformity. Her bed looking like she almost hadn’t been sleeping in it at all.

It was all very _Lena_.

“Sleep?” Lena prompts gently, lifting up the edge of her duvet in a wordless gesture for Kara to slide in the bed. Kara accepts the invitation gratefully, all but moaning when she relaxes into the mattress. Lena chuckles lowly at her reaction as she climbs in beside Kara, settling down gently like she was almost afraid to jostle Kara, to touch her in the slightest.

Kara, on the other hand, has no such qualms, reaching across to press a soft kiss to Lena’s cheek in thanks. It falls a little close to her lips for comfort. A little too close for Kara’s heart not to do a small flip. Lena doesn’t seem to fare any better from the contact, as she inhales sharply, wide eyed and red cheeked in a way that Kara has never seen her before.

“Night, Lena,” she whispers, before snuggling into the warmth of the bed, and if she so happens to shift a lot closer to Lena, well then that’s purely accidental. _Completely accidental_.

“Sweet dreams, Kara.” If Lena closes the last bit of space between them, neither of them say anything mention anything about it. They simply silently slide into a jigsaw-puzzle-like embrace and let the sandman take them under.

Kara wakes up to her phones incessantly annoying alarm and an empty bed. She stumbles out from the warmth of Lena’s, no doubt ridiculously expensive sheets, and almost makes for her own, hopefully now empty room, before she notices the travel mug sitting dutifully on the desk with her own name prominently displayed alongside a small heart on disastrously yellow post-it note.

(She smiles her way through the whole drink.

And if that little post-it ends up with the rest of the collection on her desk, then that too was completely accidental.

_So very accidental_ _)._

* * *

 

She’s not making the same mistake again. That mistake being turning up to a party dressed as a literal fruit only to be surrounded by sexy cats and cavemen. Not again. She wasn’t going to be blindsided this time. This time she was prepared. This time she had gone down at least a semi-sexy route. This time she had gone to Winn for help.

She’ll admit she was a little confused how Winn just happened to have an original design female superhero costume that also just so happened to be her exact size, but she hadn’t questioned it at the time, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth. She probably should have. She looks down at the way it hugs her figure perfectly. She was definitely going to have to ask later ( _please God let the answer be comic-con and not something weird_ ).

Whatever the reason, she was prepared and also more than a little jumpy as she waited for Lena to arrive. She’d texted Kara earlier in the day to check that she’d be at the party - she’d also signed it with three kisses that made Kara brain go on the fritz for a good five minutes before she found it in herself to reply. So now Kara just waited, and panicked, and hoped that Lena would think she looked good instead of just insanely ridiculous.

_Oh God, what if Lena thought she looked ridiculous?_

“Kara, I can’t believe you betrayed me like this.” Kara hears from behind her and she braces herself as she turns towards the voice, almost missing the odd sentence entirely amongst her nerves. Nerves that she promptly forgets about the moment she turns around and takes in Lena’s appearance. She wants to laugh. She _really wants_ to laugh. Half because the image is hilarious, and half because despite the hilarity of it all, Kara still thinks that Lena looks beautiful.

“Lena, you’re... a hot dog.”

“And you’re _Super Hot_. I’ll admit I thought we were going to be in this ridiculous costume thing together but I much prefer the avenue you’ve gone down.” Kara blushes at the compliment, positively beaming under Lena’s appreciative gaze.

“Oh, it’s nothing really. Just a skirt and some boots,” she says self deprecatingly, praying that Winn isn’t in the immediate vicinity to hear her and get offended (which he indefinitely would).

“No, it’s definitely something.”

“You wanna dance?” Kara asks, in order to divert attention from herself, pointing in the direction of the throng of drunk people mostly just side stepping and flailing. It’s a mass of uncoordinated bodies, and one that Kara generally likes to avoid, but she’d never really wanted to dance with someone before. At least, not whilst sober.

“I’d love to.” It’s a little awkward at first, until Kara breaks the ice with her worst possible dance move - the shopping cart - though she’s in half a mind to regard it as her best when Lena laughs like it’s the greatest thing she’s ever seen. Lena joins in then, pulling out her own moves and Kara can’t help but think she’s the prettiest girl she’s ever met when she does the sprinkler just to make Kara smile.

In that moment, Kara decides to take a risk. To dive. In that moment, she can’t think of a single reason why she hadn’t done it already, can’t think of any excuse not to do it now, can’t even begin to try and talk herself out of it. Not that she wants to. She definitely doesn’t want to. So she kisses her. She darts forwards and presses a kiss to Lena’s lips, pulling back almost as quickly as she pushed forwards. Bravery and courage can only push a girl so far.

She feels like a kid who just kissed their first crush, not completely sure of how it should be done. She feels a little bit stupid. Her face heats up from embarrassment at her attempt after a second of watching Lena’s frozen expression. _Lena’s frozen expression_. She truly panics then because she didn’t ask for permission and maybe she shouldn’t have just done that. Maybe this response was the exact reason she hadn’t just done it before.

She’s halfway through forming an apology when Lena smiles at her.

“Took you long enough,” Lena says with a chuckle, reaching out to tug Kara in by the waist and kiss her properly. She was kissing a hotdog. She’s fairly sure she’d had a dream about that before. She was kissing Lena. She’d undoubtedly dreamt about that. But reality was indefinitely better.

It’s still light at first. An exploration of open mouths and soft presses. It shifts with the tentative touch of Lena’s tongue against Kara’s bottom lip, begging to be allowed in.

There’s a swirl in Kara’s stomach that grows with each new movement of lips, each new tangle of tongues. She feels seconds away from spontaneously combusting when Lena’s hands slide up her neck, when fingers graze across her scalp and tangle in her hair. She bites Lena’s lip in retaliation, needing her to feel the same kind of disorientated bliss. She seemingly succeeds as Lena pulls back with a gentle gasp and searches for something in Kara’s eyes before offering her hand.

She knows what the invitation means and she’s not about to say no. She slides her hand into Lena’s and lets herself be pulled up the stairs and into a room that she knows is Lucy’s. A room that she had been in many times before, though not without Lucy, and definitely not with an extremely pretty girl that she had a huge crush on and whose tongue she could still taste in her mouth. Kara busies herself with the knickknacks on Lucy’s desk as she listens to Lena lock the door in an attempt to calm the incessant race of her heart.

“Hey, this is mine!” She accuses, spinning around to show Lena her favourite pen she’d been missing for weeks in the hopes of gaining a similar sense of outrage. Instead she just gets a shock so intense that her breath catches and she vaguely wonders if she’ll even be alive to see the sun rise in the morning. Not that it was a bad shock. It was _definitely_ not bad. “You weren’t wearing clothes underneath,” she points out needlessly in order to fill the silence.

“That suits a little stuffy,” Lena responds, watching as Kara’s eyes dart from the discarded suit to Lena, to the discarded suit and back to Lena. Always back to Lena. Not that she could really be blamed. Dark hair cascading down her chest. Black fabric against alabaster skin. Was she expecting to be seen without the suit on? Had she planned for this? Hoped? Did she always wear mind-numbingly hot lingerie like that all the time...? _What if she did it all the time?_ What if that’s what had been underneath every time her and Kara had hung out?

(Kara needed some air.

Maybe some water).

Lena must mistake the stunned silence for something else, something that wasn’t _‘you’re so pretty I forgot words are a thing’_ , because she begins to make her way rather awkwardly towards the suit, already making her apologies. “Did I read this wrong? I can put it back on if you’d feel more comfortable.”

“No!” Kara exclaims a little too loudly, cringing at the volume and the amused smile it helps form on Lena’s face. “That’s- no. Off is fine. Off is good.”

“I’m going to kiss you again if that’s okay?” Lena checks, advancing slowly, afraid she’ll somehow spook Kara. Kara has no such inhibitions, all but throwing herself to cover the gap between their bodies and kiss Lena again. Her lips are surer this time. Unrelenting. Unforgiving. She kisses Lena the way she’d been actively thinking about for weeks. The way she’d wanted to since she met her.

Eventually Kara gets too caught up in the moment, too caught up in the heat of Lena’s hands on her body, to remember her nerves. She pushes Lena onto the bed with gentle force, with soft but sure hands, watches as Lena pushes herself up to the head of the bed and finds herself crawling along the mattress to join her. She hesitates for a moment before resting her weight on Lena’s body, relaxing between her hips and kissing her again.

Lena’s legs bracket around her back. She smirks before she flips them with a sharp twist of her hips and Kara’s lungs stop dead in her chest for a few seconds as she looks up at Lena in something vaguely akin to wonder (and also just complete awe at how someone could manage to be so hot).

“Your abs inspired me to actually go to the gym,” Lena jokes in response to the dopey look on Kara’s face before she begins kissing her lips again, then dragging her lips along Kara’s jaw, grazing her teeth along the line of Kara’s neck.

Her hands wander all over the suit Kara almost forgot she was wearing in the heat of it all. Her fingers frenzied in their obvious attempts to find where the zipper was hidden. Her teeth nipping in frustration when she fails in her mission. It’s the bite that snaps Kara back to reality, drags her from her euphoria and back in the world of coherent thought processes. She can’t believe she was actually going to do this. Was she actually going to do this?

“Wait,” Kara’s voice cuts through the building tension, sounding foreign to even her own ears as the sound breathlessly trickles from her throat like honey. She sounds like she feels - like there’s a fire raging in the pit of her stomach, like its flames are licking dangerously at her lungs, like the smoke is clogging her throat in one of the most intoxicatingly addictive ways.

“Everything okay?” Lena checks, pulling back from her assault on Kara’s jaw to catch her eye. The genuine curiosity and tenderness that Kara finds in her gaze almost makes her forget why she ever wanted her to stop in the first place.

“Perfect. It’s just...” Kara takes a deep breath, prepares herself to feel like a complete and total idiot, then starts to speak again. “I wanted to ask you on a date.”

“Well my answer would be yes,” Lena states surely, leaning in to try and kiss Kara again, cocking her brow when Kara dodges her mouth quickly and attempts to explain herself further.

“No, I mean, I want to take you on an actual date before we... _you know_. I want to do this right.” She wanted to make sure Lena knew what this meant, knew that Kara wanted something beyond just finally giving in to the tension that had been building between them for too long. That she liked her. Like _really, really_ _liked_ her. Which is why she panics more than a little bit when Lena’s forehead drops solidly to her shoulder as she releases a strained groan.

“Why do you have to be simultaneously the hottest and sweetest thing ever?” She mumbles against the skin of Kara’s shoulder after a few seconds of silence (a few seconds that would otherwise be known as the longest few seconds of Kara’s entire life).

“Good genes?” Kara tries with an unsure smile - one that slips into something far happier and free the moment she hears Lena’s responding laugh and feels a soft kiss being pressed to her shoulder in reassurance. Her body relaxes into the action; tension she didn’t even realise was in her shoulders rolling off her as Lena kisses the bare skin of her neck in an apology for the pause, and the subsequent immediate panic it caused Kara.

“I would love to go on a date with you. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Can we still kiss?” Lena asks, finally lifting her head from Kara’s shoulder to help convince her with a cheeky grin. Thankfully for her, Kara needed exactly zero convincing to say yes. All she really needed to do was think about the feeling of Lena’s lips on hers or literally just look down for a split second and she would be totally on board with anything that Lena said (even her hugely incorrect opinions on which pie flavour was superior - apple was for schmucks).

“Definitely.”

(They could totally just kiss.

Kara wasn’t a total horndog).

* * *

 

Kara wakes up a few hours later to a charming smile that’s a touch too smug and the vague sense that she was never going to be allowed to forget this moment for the rest of her life because she apparently was a total horndog. A big one. The hugest of horndogs.

(And she didn’t regret it one bit).

“Stop it.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I can see it in your eyes.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just - you didn’t hold out for very long. I wasn’t even actively trying. I was respecting your wishes.” Lena had actually been incredibly respectful, and apprehensive, and had taken some convincing once Kara realised she had overestimated her power. It was sweet. But Kara wasn’t about to do herself dirty and admit that. She had a reputation to protect.

“Oh please, you lured me into this with your kisses and your stupid lines.” They weren’t actually stupid. Not in the slightest. Not at all. In fact, if Kara was being entirely truthful, she would admit they were some of the sweetest things she had ever had the honour of hearing - alongside literally every other sound Lena made beyond them that night.

( _Are you sure? Because I’m still going to want you in the morning. And the next day. And the next. Probably the next one after that too. I reckon probably just an indefinite amount of next days..._

_She’d only stopped talking when Kara kissed her)._

“They weren’t lines. I’d still like you to take me on that date you promised,” Lena assures with a soft smile, before self-consciously adding, “if that’s what you want too of course.”

“Yeah?”

“Obviously. I’d have said yes to the banana.”

“It was a good costume,” Kara defends. Just like she will to everyone who dares question that particular wardrobe choice. She liked to think it worked out quite well for her. Plus she still maintained that getting to wear pyjamas to a party without judgement was a gift in and of itself.

“It was certainly _appealing_.”

“Lena. No.”

“Come on, that’s a classic,” Lena argues with a grin, and despite how pretty it is, Kara still decides she takes her previous statement back. She fully takes it back. That wardrobe choice was the worst decision she ever made, purely for that joke, and the fact that she knew she would be hearing it for a long, _long_ time.

“You’re an idiot.”

“An idiot that you’re stuck with.”

(Somehow Kara didn’t quite mind...

She didn’t mind one bit).

* * *

 

_“Oh my God! Danvers has game!”_

_“Lucy, get out!”_

_“It’s my room.”_

_(Kara hopes the pillow she throws doesn’t hit too hard._

_Who was she kidding? She hoped it killed)._

**Author's Note:**

> c--and--b.tumblr.com


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